Martha Wells

My Flying Lizard Circus

A Few Things

WorldCon Schedule: WorldCon is in Spokane, WA this year. (It was in London last year.) The program is searchable online, and I think the sign-ups for the Kaffee Klatches are online this year too.

You Like That on Doctor Who? But How Could You Not Like This?Thursday 13:00 - 13:45, 300C (CC)Think "The Rings of Akhaten" is better than it gets credit for? Or that "The Caves of Androzoni" is overrated? What episodes of Doctor Who do you like that few others do and why? Which always rank near the top of fan polls but you just don't like? And which are nearly forgotten (and should be)?Jim Mann (M), Warren Frey, Steven Schapansky, Martha Wells, Charlie Reeves

From Middle Earth to Westeros: Fantasy WorldbuildingSaturday 10:00 - 10:45, Integra Telecom Ballroom 100B (CC)Building a believable world, with believable geography, culture, and rules, is at least as important in fantasy as it is in SF. The panel looks at how to create fantasy worlds, citing examples of the good (and maybe the not so good). Martha Wells (M), Matthew Johnson, Mary Soon Lee, Michael Swanwick, Pat Cadigan

Kaffee Klatche - Martha WellsSaturday 13:00 - 13:45, 202B-KK4 (CC)Join a panelist and up to 9 other fans for a small discussion. Coffee and snacks available for sale on the 2nd floor. Requires advance sign-up.

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ArmadilloCon in Austin was a lot of fun this year. It's a small con, with maybe 500-600 people, focused on books and art, but with a lot of authors. Everything seemed to go pretty smoothly, and the all day writers workshop on Friday, run by Marshall Ryan Maresca, went really well. The first half of the day there are two writing-related panels for the workshop participants only, then we break into groups for the rest of the day and do the critiquing. It was neat to see people who had been students in the workshop several years ago now coming back to teach as pros.

Ken Liu was the guest of honor and did a presentation on translating Chinese SF, "Betrayal With Integrity: Conformance and Estrangement in Translating Chinese SF" and a panel on Silkpunk: Asian themes and influences in SF/F.

Most of my panels were on business aspects of writing, and we answered a lot of questions. I also did a reading from the new Raksura book, The Edge of Worlds, and had a pretty good-sized audience of about twelve people.

A lot of the non-panel, non-reading activity took place in the lobby bar area, and it was very noisy and happy down there on Friday and Saturday nights.

And a friend of mine got her nails done in a very cool Raksura pattern: photo on Tumblr